About Oppositional Defiant Disorder
What does it look like?
How common is it?
What causes it?
How long does it last?
What treatments are effective?
A review of the evidence
What's new?
Resources

How long does it last?
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) can persist through childhood into adulthood.  The severity of its consequences depends upon whether or not there was early intervention.

Children with early symptoms of ODD may go on to develop Conduct Disorder, a more serious and often chronic behavioural disorder that can persist through life.

Children with externalizing disorders, like ADHD, if untreated, are more likely than children with internalizing disorders, like depression, to go on to develop conduct disorder. 

Children and adolescents with ODD have trouble with social interactions with both authority figures and with peers, so they are at high risk of school failure and inability to obtain and keep employment. They are also more likely to experience peer rejection, except by those who share their behaviours and opinions – one source of the gangs often prevalent in high schools or even senior public schools.[1,2]

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1.	Loeber, R,  Burke JD, Lahey, BB, Winters A,  Zera, M. 2000. Oppositional Defiant and Conduct Disorder: A Review of the Past 10 Years, Part I.  Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; 39(12):1468-1484.
2.	U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1999. Mental Health: A Report to the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.